This week, I received notice that I am a member of the plaintiff class in Schlesinger, et. al. v. Ticketmaster. After ten years of litigation, the parties' proposed settlement is pending before the Superior Court in Los Angeles. If you purchased tickets through Ticketmaster between 1999 and 2013, you most likely are also a part of the class. The case alleges (in short) that Ticketmaster overcharged customers for fees. Ticketmaster claims that its processing fees were necessary for it to recover its costs, while plaintiffs allege that those fees were actually a means of generating profits for Ticketmaster. Shocking, no?

Image of U2 Concert uploaded by Dream out loud (talk)

The terms of the settlement are actually pretty sweet. Class members will get a discount code that they can use on the Ticketmaster website entitling them to $2.25 off future Ticketmaster transactions. Class members get to use the code up to 17 times in the next four years. The value of the discount codes is about $386 million, and if the money is not used up, class members will be eligible for free ticket to Live Nation events. Ticketmaster's website will also now include disclosures about how it profits from its fees.

But then there's THIS:

Ticketmaster will pay $3 million to the University of California, Irvine School of Law to be used for the benefit of consumers like yourself. In addition to the benefits set forth above, Ticketmaster will also make a $3 million cy pres cash payment to the University of California, Irvine School of Law’s Consumer Law Clinic. The money will establish the Consumer Law Clinic as a permanent clinic, and it will be used to: (i) provide direct legal representations for clients with consumer law claims, (ii) advocate for consumers through policy work, and (iii) provide free educational tools (including online tutorials) to help consumers understand their rights, responsibilities, and remedies for online purchases.

The settlement strikes me as masterly. It gets a beneift to people who, if the allegations are true, were actually harmed by the alleged conduct, but it does so in a way that will generate more business for Ticketmaster going forward, and Ticketmaster may value that new business stream at around $386 million in any case. Ticketmaster has had to make changes to its website to eliminate the risk of deception going forward. And the world gets a consumer protection clinic funded the sort of business against whom consumers need to be protected.